Amalgam of Me

Toddler-Proof Your Computer

My three-year-old, like all other children his age, is fond of mimicking his parents. Monkey see, monkey do, right? Unfortunately, we spend a good deal of our free time on the computer, which makes him want to play with it as well, particularly when we aren’t looking. He hasn’t managed to do […]

Buy Glasses… Online!?

I’m smart, frugal, and internet savvy, so you’d think this concept would have occurred to me before now. After all, you can buy nearly anything online nowadays, usually for much less than you’d pay at a store. Until very recently, though, I had it in my head that you simply couldn’t buy glasses […]

To Lasik, or Not to Lasik?

That is the question. Ever since my wife and I put our finances in order, we’ve been looking forward to pursuing larger goals like becoming debt free, paying our son’s way through college, or the ever-popular buying a house. More immediately, though, I’ve been entertaining the idea of getting laser eye surgery. I’ve had […]

Better Parenting through Exercise

If you’re anything like me, you want to be a good parent and you want to be healthier. Very recently, I came across a good way to help achieve these seemingly disparate goals at the same time by using a health incentive program.

It’s one of those oft-overlooked benefits of health insurance. My provider […]

7 Things We Did to Improve Our Finances

If every year of my life had an ostentatious title, this year would have been the “Year of Personal Finance.” I’ve always had a good head for math, so you’d have thought that I’d already know tons about finance. It wasn’t until just a few months ago, though, that I started really learning […]

Keeping an Online Family Christmas List

Like most families, mine has long used the “hint passing” method of knowing what to buy each other for Christmas. You know how it works; one of us will casually hint to another how we would like something and that information will work its way around the rest of the family until someone decides […]

Diet and Fitness: Survival Skills

I was fortunate/wise enough to take some nutrition- and fitness-related classes while I was in college. Much of what I learned really opened my eyes to the realities of health. For example, did you know that the vast majority of people will suffer some sort of lower back problem in their adult life? […]

Getting Married Young

When my wife and I got married, I was 20 and she was 18. According to popular opinion, we were “too young,” and I’ll be the first to admit that we were toward the lower end of most marital age statistics. The median age at first marriage nowadays is around the mid-twenties (25ish […]